The fixer upper squirearchy

Because this is PNG I cannot ever, really, be a landowner in the sense of stakeholder or Mama Graun. But I can buy land that's already been alienated by the State (although the act has been made considerably harder since the arrival of a Chinese nickel mine in Madang). After being led on by one homeowner for nearly three years, we finally got our deposit back, and were lucky enough to have another property to pop it down on.  Capitalising on someone else's loss, or really mismanagement, we bought a plot of land with a kit house that was in default to the bank. Now we're renovating, and it's slowly becoming habitable. Right now Junior and a handful of other Karawari kids live there. Ela  Enterprises has put in two new outside staircases, a water tank, a toilet and shower, opened up the main room, and are about to start on phase two, which will involve a big verandah out front, a cement floor below (so we can have workers meeting down there---and eventually build up office rooms). The kitchen will also be renovated, and the floor tiled, and sooner or later, if all goes well, we'll bring a satellite in for TV and internet at Chez Sullivan. Junior has been meticulous about the gardens and general maintenance, so we bought a freezer so he could run an ice block business from the front yard.

If all things go as planned (i.e. bank loans), we will also buy the little peach colored house next door and have a compound, making us a squirearchy in the settlements of Madang. Later we'll flip them for a place in Lake Com0, or a B&B in Provence.

This of course reminds me of a story about my Raikos in-laws, the relatives of Chris' wife, who live just close enough to town to always be around and just far enough away to need a place to crash. When Sandra first came to live with us, the whole family had finally 'arrived'  at the height of bourgeois modernity, with our everstocked pantry, cd player and TV, not to mention clean sheets, good towels, lots of cutlery, a shower and washing machine. My house became Sandra's house, and in so doing, a Raikos collective house. As might be imagined, there were painful adjustments, including the rising paranoia in my gullet. On a given day you would find me counting sheets, towels, socks on the line and even spoons in the kitchen drawer-- until eventually, involuntarily, I learned to 'let go' in more ways than one. But the last straw came when, before a party, I pulled out my old Provence tablecloth, legacy of a beloved French ex, and couldn't find the matching serviettes. I searched everywhere, but the entire household shrugged---sorry, no, never saw those, have no idea---i.e. they're gone, Mums, get over it. But I kept looking, it irked me so---there were supposed to eight, I believe, and I could only find three. Finally I 'let go.' Then Christmas arrived and my sisters and brother came to visit and we all brought food and gifts to Raikos for a celebration. Sometime during that visit we walked to a village nearby where they were having an enormous and glorious singsing with great clay pots of food and wooden bowls and pigs exchanged, and when I looked across at all the brilliant headdresses bouncing and swaying across the singsing ground I noticed five bright yellow Provence serviettes bobbing up and down above the crowd. 

I do wish to note, though, that I am no longer the mere evil mother-in-law but have graduated to revered matriarch, with a home in town, another in DCA, another in Yimas Village, Sepik, and a base camp in Awim Village, at the head of the Arafundi River. My god: homeless to realty mogul in so little time. Sandra and Chris are, for the time being, living in the Karawari, so I have grown very complacent about my home furnishings. Some may aspire to a weekend house at the shore, or  a pied a terre in the the city. Others buy islands, or just a leer jet to shuttle from rental to rental. I prefer to shuttle from my various tropical estates, juggling mortgages, rents and eternal indenture to every villages that has built me a thatch house.   

Today's shots show  the McMansion in progress, plus the house nextdoor behind the lovely flowering tree. Note Madonna, Jason, Junior, and Josh, and elsewhere a shot of Josh and Nelly learning to drive, when they're really just searching for the elusive Reverse.

In closing, Im going to repeat a story by Michael Bates, of Trans Niugini Tours. Apparently their company pilot, George, was flying villagers in and out of Ambunti, on the Sepik, to Wewak, and one of them wanted to bring his dog along. George had to explain that dogs could not fly unrestrained, according to DCA rules, but must be transported in a box. The picture here shows what George found when he returned to Ambunti.